We started the day as usual with a really good breakfast at the hotel. I’ve been eating pretty much the same thing every morning here on Skiathos: Greek salad and Greek yogurt with fresh fruit and honey, along with a glass of orange juice and a cappuccino.
After breakfast, we walked down to Kanapitsa Beach, the other beach close to the hotel. Just like Tzaneria, you get there by taking a series of stairs down toward the water, but Kanapitsa is a little closer, so it only took us about five minutes. The beach is smaller and much narrower than Tzaneria, and if you’re planning to spend the day stretched out in the sun, Tzaneria is probably the better choice. Though as it turned out, Kanapitsa had the better lunch.
We ate at Kanapitsa Restaurant and got a great table right by the water. We ordered the catch of the day, which the staff described as red snapper, though as far as I know, red snapper isn’t found in the waters around Greece, so I assume it was a local fish similar to snapper.
The fish was grilled whole and then filleted for us at the table. The flesh was white and really delicious, and the fish was perfectly cooked. It was served very simply with a little salad and spinach on the side, along with melted butter that we could pour over ourselves. It was a big fish, almost a kilo, so even though a lot of it is head, skin, and bones, we were very full by the time we finished. After lunch, we stayed down by the beach for a while to let all that food settle before we climbed back up the stairs to our hotel.
Early in the evening, we headed out to the airport for some serious plane spotting. I used to work as an airline pilot, and I still think it’s fun to watch planes land and take-off, especially at a place like Skiathos, where you can get so close. When the planes land on runway 01 as they did that evening, they come in over the water right by Skiathos Town and fly really low over the road that runs right at the beginning of the runway.
We also tried to get some good photos, but that turned out to be quite a challenge. You can see the planes coming from far away, but once they get close, everything suddenly happens very quickly and a moment later the plane has flown right over your head. It’s pretty wild to experience from that close and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it.
Afterwards, we walked a little farther toward town and stopped at the outdoor bar Gardenia for a drink in the evening sun. We had planned to have dinner at Akrogiali later, but they were completely booked, so we continued walking to find somewhere else.
On the way, we almost ended up in a tourist trap. We passed a restaurant that looked nice enough, so we sat down at a table. Almost immediately, they brought in water to the table, opened the bottle and poured it into our glasses. They were also on their way over with bread and olives, but we managed to stop them before they reached the table. That seemed a little strange to us, so we checked the restaurant on Google and found a long list of bad reviews, including several from people complaining about being served water, bread, and olives they hadn’t ordered, without being told that they would be charged for them. We paid for the water, politely said goodbye, and quickly moved on.
Instead, we ended up at Scuna, which turned out to be a really nice restaurant. We were still quite full after the big fish at lunch, so we kept dinner light and ordered grilled sardines and bougiourdi, a small dish of baked feta and tomato. Scuna’s version was quite spicy and really good.
The sardines were also excellent, straight from the grill with onion and tomato on the side. I always eat sardines bones and all because I can’t be bothered sitting there picking them apart. Steve is the complete opposite and carefully removes the backbone and any other bones he can find before eating them.
While we were having dinner, several more planes came in to land, so the plane spotting continued from our table. It was also a full moon that night, and the moon looked enormous and beautiful, even though it somehow looks tiny in all my photos.
Before catching the bus back to the hotel, we stopped by Karamela, the cutest little shop selling all kinds of Greek cakes and other sweet treats. They also have ice cream, and we went for the portokalopita flavor, inspired by the Greek orange cake. There were little pieces of cake and orange mixed into the ice cream, with lots of orange flavor, and it was really good.
